Our language can be seen as an ancient
City—pace Wittgenstein—who  
Surely meant a baptized city, for
The names come only with the blessing…

And even though he boards in Muzot, finds
A seat with a window so he can watch
The rain, a pad and pen and swollen eyes—
His naming is no longer for the living,
He knows that. Squatting, old, narrow-gauge trains:
He studies his reflection in the dark tunnels
In the glass: There is swelling, that
Awful puffiness, rust in the throat…
Mimetic passion, not rocket science.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
    I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
    To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
    To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
        While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
                In such an ecstasy!
    Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -
        To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thus Keats, who, he reminds himself, wrote:
the rude
Wasting of old Time -with a billowy main,
A sun, a shadow of a magnitude.
Yet still it rains; the rails, become archaic
Through the Goddard Pass,
His final way of seeing mountain peaks .
In 1926 as the snow melts…
He stops.
The correspondence…

Tsvetayeva has written:  
Your name is poetry! Exclaims:
Your name is poetry! But she always
Exclaims—
May I hail you like this!
Your baptism was the prologue to
The whole of you!

It even smells of death in this train. Dead mice
Under the seats. Why would Marina think
Of baptism here, his baptism?
Herr
Rilke, may I help you?
For baptism
Read death, read mort, but not for ‘mortal’, for
A mort is only played if some music
Is needed at the blessing. Mort:
A horn will sound announcing death,
A horn to announce a new beginning,
Of a life’s deep death in deep
Snow…wolves abound…and not a perfect trip
Through the Alps…

Marina Leukemia on his
Baptism into the ancient city:
Herr Rilke your very name
Is a poem. You are a phenomenon
Of nature. The poet who comes after you
Is you.

My dear, Rainer; my soul, my Maria,
My blood coagulates and sinks
Into the snow. I take to my heart:
One poet only lives, and now and then
Who bore him, and who bears him now, will meet.


And never meet. (There is one only) in
A lightning field, canaries in a cage—
How could we meet?
The world betrays us,
I know, for a field of fire, for poetry
Is correspondence from a great distance
Made only greater by our love.
Great honor, great poet,
(signed) Not for reading. Marina.

(July, 2009)

She sits there alone and cold
Cold from the fight they just had
Cold from the words given
Just cold

She rethinks the talk they had,
Rethinks all the moments that went bad
All the regret just harbored
She sits there alone
Isolated from the one she wants the most
He’s two hundred miles away, doesn’t even care
Doesn’t even say goodbye doesn’t even apologize
Apologize for all the neglect

All the strife
The pain between them
The anguish he gives
The lonely nights he induces
The broken heart he creates
He doesn’t even know

She sits there tending to the wound, the deep
Cut visible to no one but hurts her like a disease
Like a disease, it eats her away bit by bit
Clutching to her like a newborn child,
It won’t go away
Won’t let her forget that night
Won’t let her think of anything else but him

She sits there thinking
Being productive just isn’t an option
It’s like she’s sick
It’s like she can’t move, knowing he’s angry
But he doesn’t chase her
Doesn’t fight for her like he should
Like he told her that night
The confessions he gave her
The high he gave her
The addiction he’s given her
It’s like he forgot

Overwhelmed with himself and the moments he’s in,
He never recalls that night,
Neither does she
He never talks about the kiss,
Neither does she
He never tells her what she needs to hear,
Because he doesn’t know
Can someone be so ignorant?
Can someone really not sense a connection between two people?

He leads her on like a horse to water
But leads her to nothing but dry sand
He uses her like a tool,
One day but not the next
Like she’s a convenient item waiting around
For him when necessary
Like she doesn’t deserve better

Yet she sits, thinking
Her addiction is too strong
Her heart is weak
And her need is great
She texts him
Looking for a response
Anything to help her move forward
Anything to give her hope with a future with him
Anything to remind her of that night
Anything to remind her of the moments they shared
In denial,
He doesn’t say it
Not one word closer to what she needs
Not one call closer to what she yearns for
So she waits
She plays the friend card,
The loyal, pure-minded friend
Holding back her feelings,
Holding back the lust until he says it
Something, that anything
So she can finally tell him
She knows it won’t be tonight maybe not tomorrow
But she waits
Like a tiger to its prey,
She waits for a drunken night
And drunken texts
She waits for his vulnerability to heal her own
Waits for the confessions to begin
Waits

Day by day she withers away
Waiting for a boy
Who knows nothing but joy
Knows nothing of pain
Knows not the love he can gain
With such few words
Because she can love him like no other
Be like no other lover
Be like none before
And still have him coming back for more
So he sits there drinking a beer
Talking to his friends who sit near
Ignorant to the pain he gives her

As she sits there quietly
Hurting, yearning
Drinking the pain away
Smoking the hurt into ash
Getting her fix from the thing he quit
And falling faster and deeper into an emotional pit

This is why people isolate themselves
They don’t like vulnerability
They don’t like pain
The hurt, regret, stabbing, burning, cutting, pain
They don’t want to cry
To sit there all night on some false hope
False hope of attachment of potential
No
They turn their back
Ignore the person who hurts them
Ignores them like a child giving the cold shoulder
Facing away from him,
With tears in her eyes
She hurts herself by separating from him
By building a wall
Hurts herself by trying to end their relationship,
End everything they are,
But she’s weak

Looking over her shoulder to see if he’s still there,
She picks up her phone to write another text.